Harvard Book Store Presents:

Imani Perry

presenting 
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People 
in conversation with Cristela Guerra 

Harvard Book Store welcomes Imani Perry—National Book Award–winning author of South to America and the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University—for a discussion of her new book Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, a beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture. She will be joined in conversation by Cristela Guerra—a senior arts and culture reporter for WBUR and 2024 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Ticketing

Tickets include admission for one and one hardcover copy of Black in Blues pre-signed by the author. 

About Black in Blues

A surprising, beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry

Throughout history, Black life has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways, from the hopefulness of a blue sky to the deep melancholy of Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.

Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as from art and history: the dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the sixteenth century; the fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure; the blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one, gone too soon.

Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers.

Praise for Black in Blues

“Imani Perry’s work is brilliant and lyrical as ever! How clearly she assesses the history of Black and Blue, knitting them together with language both precise and haunting. This book is a great gift, in that it allowed me to see the world anew with Perry’s clear-eyed insight. How Perry allows me to understand my Blue better, too!” -Jesmyn Ward, author of Let Us Descend and Sing, Unburied, Sing

“Black in Blues is a stunningly original journey in search of the historical origins of the very soul of African American life and culture. Along the way, Perry shows, with telling detail and in engaging prose, how ‘The Blues’ became Black, and how Black people became ‘Blues People.’” -Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“With Black in Blues, Imani Perry establishes herself as the most important interpreter of Black life in our time. With intellectual skill, an artist’s eye, and the beauty of her pen, she powerfully tells the story of our people through the color blue. This is an extraordinary book.” -Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again and We Are the Leaders

“Imani Perry’s Black in Blues is a masterful convergence of literature, history, and culture—where color itself becomes the field for reflection and revelation. The sheer span of Perry’s thinking, like the sweep of a great sky, stirs the most breathtaking of elusive emotions: awe.” -Evan Osnos, author of Wildland and Age of Ambition

“An impressionistic cultural history of the African diaspora through its connections to the color blue, from the Congo to Haiti, Jamaica, and the American South, in music, dance, folklore, art, and literature. . . . Packed with cultural references to Nina Simone, Zora Neale Hurston, Miles Davis, and Picasso’s African-inspired Blue Period, this is a fascinating and creative work of popular anthropology . . . Original and affecting.” –Booklist (starred review)

“A lyrical meditation on ‘the mystery of blue and its alchemy in the lives of Black folk.’ . . . In direct and intimate prose, Perry synthesizes an impressive range of research into a sinewy, pulsing narrative that positions the past as an active, living force in the present. Readers will be swept up.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Bios

Imani Perry is the National Book Award-winning author of South to America, as well as eight other books of nonfiction. She is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Perry lives between Philadelphia and Cambridge with her two sons.

Cristela Guerra is a senior arts and culture reporter for WBUR, a queer Panamanian journalist of color, and a moderator who facilitates and leads conversations around race, identity, and equity. Before working in public radio, she was a newspaper journalist for more than a decade, working at The Boston Globe and The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida. She was a 2024 Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Her studies examined stories from the diaspora, including those of her own Panamanian heritage, the reasons that compel people to migrate and how those individuals build community and maintain connections to their cultural identity. Her work received a regional and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2014 and most recently received another regional Edward R. Murrow in 2023 as part of “Continuing Coverage” for her work at the U.S.-Mexico border on the journey of Venezuelan migrants. She was chosen as a 2019 Latina Leader by Amplify Latinx and selected by YW Boston to be inducted into its 2023 Academy of Women Achievers and receive the organization’s Sylvia Ferrell-Jones Award. They are the vice-president of the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and vice-chair of the board at RAW Art Works in Lynn.

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.